11:17

it started as the latter, after my watch stopped on the eponymous minute and i realized what i wanted each song to be–an encapsulation of a moment in its entirety, with all of its sense impressions and emotional resonance intact; time frozen and extracted through alluring melody and meticulous arrangement

six or seven years later, after i got a band together to help flesh out the songs, my bandmates convinced me to switch to spelling it out. i don’t remember their reasoning, or why i agreed, but i did. i didn’t understand at the time that the change was tantamount to a brand overhaul, that any listeners i had cultivated (which in those early years, were not insignificant in number) would be left adrift, that any profiles they were connected to, hosted on third-party platforms, would become defunct

but the damage was nothing compared to what i myself levied years earlier, when i first stopped playing live, slowed my stream of musical output to a trickle, and then, fearing repercussions when the torrent site i was a member of got seized by interpol, erased my online presence. i took yet another torch to my musical career half a decade later, after the name change, when i released an album and then, rather than promoting it with live shows, dissolved my band and moved to korea

eleven seventeen it remains, and the audience grows smaller every year. but there are still older songs under 11:17 on all the streaming platforms, and for searchability’s sake, i’m thinking about just throwing all of the music onto both. after all, how many opportunities did i forego to share the music with people who wanted to hear it? how many songs and instrumentals have i created and then sat on, thinking they weren’t *quite* there? it took me five years, after guiding last to a state where it was about 90% complete, to finish it to the best of my abilities and share it with the world. how much momentum did i lose in that time?

the older i get, the more impressed i am with people who trust their ability to make music from a young age, unwaveringly sharing their output with the world. i’ve always been riddled with doubt. but doubt is useless. all you gotta do is make noise

so does it really matter if it’s a moment, a number, or a couple of words? in its current incarnation, the name associates itself with any and all permutations of the name. it’s a date on the calendar. the end of a korean license plate. the only sensible digits in a string of code, separated by an underscore

listen long enough, and you’ll start seeing it everywhere